


All In

by orphan_account



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Drinking, Emotional Disaster Shiro, Keith Attempts To Substitute His Dick For Ten Years Of Therapy, Kissing, M/M, Past Adam/Shiro (Voltron), Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-30
Updated: 2018-08-30
Packaged: 2019-07-04 17:11:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15845709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: "Want to talk about it?" said Keith eventually, without looking round."Not really," Shiro said.





	All In

The sunset was magnificent. The dry land blazed golden in its grasp. Shiro had started out leaning on his hoverbike, but now he was sitting on the edge of the cliff. He'd seen a lot of beautiful worlds. Nowhere else was Earth.

He didn't look round when he heard the second bike braking. "Hey," said Keith behind him. "Someone said you'd gone out. Thought you might be here."

"Hi, Keith," Shiro said.

Keith came and sat down next to him without waiting to be asked, and then didn't say anything else till the sun had finished dropping below the horizon and the last dull gasps of red and purple had faded out of the night sky. Then they kept looking out together over the black desert under the starry bowl of the night, still not saying anything.

Finally Shiro looked at Keith. He was looking well. A lot better than he'd been when they fished him out of Black's crash-landing with four broken ribs and a head wound. They hadn't seen so much of each other since then. Shiro's life had gotten busy again, which was how he liked it. The more he had to do, the less time there was to think.

Sometimes, though, you just had to watch a sunset.

"Want to talk about it?" said Keith eventually, without looking round.

"Not really," Shiro said.

He’d missed the day. He’d missed it by nearly a full week, and then he’d glanced at his schedule that morning and realised: four years. It had been four years since Sendak had launched his assault on Earth. Four years since the best of the best of the Garrison's senior pilots had scrambled to the defence and been blown out of the sky in under ten minutes by Galra fighters. What was there to say? Shiro had missed the day. He’d had one serious relationship in his adult life and he'd crashed it off a cliff on purpose and never looked back. He didn't have the right.

"What would help?" said Keith.

"I guess about ten years of therapy," Shiro said. "Whenever I have the time." Funny how one strand of self-pity led into another. He was ashamed of how little of this was the grief it should have been. He'd been thinking about himself more than Adam by the time Keith sat down.

Keith said, bullish, "You've got a right to the time. We'll get you the time. The Atlas –"

"- needs me," Shiro said. "Besides. Keith. I really _don't_ want to talk about it."

He knew Keith would get it. A guy who'd spent that much of his adolescence being shoved into rooms with social workers and child psychologists and gently encouraged to talk about it – as if _I lost my dad and I hate it_ needed explaining – knew what it meant to just want to _do_ something. Going for the work, the goal, the dream, the chance to fly: all of it something to fill your world up with meaning, something too good to give up on.

And Keith did get it, and unlike any of the others he was going to let Shiro get away with it. He just smiled, a little wry. "Want to race, then?"

Shiro laughed. "Absolutely."

 

Night racing was a rush: only the stars and their headlamps and their knowledge of the terrain to guide them round their old switchback routes. Keith won twice, and was a cocky little shit about it, so Shiro went all out their third run and left him in the dust. "What the hell, how did you get that acceleration out of _that_ pile of scrap?" Keith demanded.

Shiro wiggled the fingers of his right hand at him. "Who are you calling a pile of scrap?"

"Oh, you are kidding me," said Keith. "If you turn your bike into an Altean mech warrior I'm leaving."

"Best of five?"

Keith's nostrils flared at the challenge but he said grudgingly, "I'm not gonna be able to beat you if you're doing that. Not on _this_. I could call Black."

"Nothing human-built is going to beat Black," said Shiro, "no matter how much Altean magic I jam into it."

"Well." Neither of them suggested _not_ going all out. It wouldn't be any fun. "Back to base, then?" Keith said.

Shiro said nothing.

"Or – my parents' old place isn't far from here. It's still empty."

Shiro tipped his head back to look out for a moment at the dizzying spread of desert stars. "What I want right now," he said, "is to be about two-thirds of the way to really, really drunk."

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Keith nod. "Okay. We can do that."

 

The first bottle Keith pulled out of a rickety side cabinet was whiskey, and the second one was a purple bottle of a Galra spirit Shiro recognised from his time in the arena: there'd been prizes, sometimes. He knew from experience it tasted like drain cleaner. "How long's this been here?" he said.

"I came back with my mom," said Keith. He recovered one glass and one plastic mug and passed Shiro the glass. They started with the whiskey. Keith poured about the same amount for each of them. "Let me know when you hit two-thirds really drunk," he said.

"You'll be there before me," Shiro said, "if you're going for even measures. I'm still bigger than you. Pretty sure even one-armed there's more of me to soak it up."

Keith just looked amused. "You're not Galra."

Halfway down the whiskey bottle Shiro was prepared to admit he'd been wrong. He was definitely feeling it more than Keith. He'd probably gone bright red. The edges of the room were turning comfortingly soft. Keith had gone soft too, slow and lazy as his usual taut energy relaxed, with a hint of a drawling accent he normally kept tamped down creeping into his voice. "You sound Texan," Shiro told him.

"Y'know what's funny?" said Keith. "If you're a Galra, this is a really sexy accent. Blades kept telling me it sounds like a planet out, out –" he gestured vaguely at the roof, "- out that way. Tried to get me to do it more."

"It's not bad on Earth either," Shiro said. "Maybe you should do it more."

Keith laughed, low, which also wasn't bad. Shiro picked up his whiskey glass but didn't drink any. He wasn't feeling anymore the ugly black dog of a feeling that wanted him to blot this evening out of existence, drown it in adrenaline or alcohol or going back to the Garrison and working through Atlas's numbers till his eyes crossed. He _was_ drunk, though. It was probably why he said thoughtfully, "This is good. It's good. You know what would be good?"

"What?" said Keith. He was considering the purple bottle. Maybe it tasted less like drain cleaner if you had some Galra tastebuds.

"Sex," Shiro said. He said it without really thinking about it, just because it was true. "S'been – _it's been_ – a long time. Ages. I miss it." He tried to think of the last time. It had been, God, it had been Adam. Before they broke up. Well before, because Adam in a fighting mood wasn't Adam in the mood for sex, and by the end they'd been fighting all the time. Shiro tried not to think about that. He thought about the good things. Letting Adam hold him down, even though Adam couldn't have _actually_ kept Shiro pinned if Shiro didn't like it: but he did, so that was fine. And the feeling of being that close to someone. The way it could be so real, so intimate, so _good_. Shiro's body had been betraying him one way after another all his life, but sex – fucking – made him feel like his muscles and bones and heart and lungs were all on his side for once.

"Yeah," he concluded, still looking into his whiskey, "I miss that. I miss it. That would be good."

"Okay," said Keith.

Shiro looked up at him.

"We can do that." Keith paused. "If you want. If you – if it helps."

"You sure?" said Shiro slowly, because – yeah, _yeah_ , he wanted. He looked at Keith's shadowy eyes and muscled arms and oh, he wanted. God, it had been so long.

"Not a big deal," Keith said. "Yeah, I'm sure, Shiro. C'mon, c'mere. Let me."

He came and took the glass out of Shiro's hand, and he glanced at it and then quickly knocked back the rest of Shiro's whiskey, just swallowed it in a gulp and rubbed his hand across his wet lips after. Shiro leaned back in his chair to look at him. Keith gave him a quick little grin and then went down on his knees at Shiro's feet and put his hands on Shiro's thighs. Right up until then Shiro had just been idly lingering somewhere at the edge of arousal, but Keith's grip landing just above his left knee made it real. Shiro felt his cock thickening up in response. Keith dug his thumbs into the muscles of Shiro's thighs, both sides, and Shiro gripped the chair tight with his right hand – splinters appeared around his metal fingers – while his left hand somehow ended up in Keith's hair.

"This okay?" Keith said, smiling up at him. The light from the cabin's one lamp caught his eyes, a flash of alien violet.  Shiro's mouth was dry but he nodded. "I could blow you," Keith said.

"Keith," said Shiro. Keith's hair was shaggy and rough-textured under his fingers. Keith leaned into the touch a little, so he liked it, and grinned up at him again. He slid his hands further up Shiro's thighs, hit his belt, raised his eyebrows expressively.

Shiro blew out a huge breath. He was fully hard now, despite the whiskey turning the edges of his perception lush and lazy, slowing everything down. Keith was right here: Keith's _mouth_ was right – and he was offering, plainly into it. It would be good. It would be really good.

But there was some obscure demanding monster in him that didn’t want just easy and good, that had to have everything or nothing: all out, or why bother, what was the _point_.

"No," he said. "I want you to fuck me."

Keith said nothing for a moment. His grip on Shiro’s thighs had gone white-knuckled, tight. Felt good. Shiro got his fingers twined in Keith’s hair and tugged just a little. He wanted to see Keith’s face. It seemed important.

“Keith?” he said.

Keith looked up at him and said, "Okay.”

He got to his feet. He pulled Shiro up along with him and then he pulled Shiro's shirt up over his head and threw it away somewhere. Shiro laughed and let him, got an arm around his waist and pulled them close. His mouth landed messy on Keith's cheek as Keith turned his face aside to mouth at Shiro's jaw.

After a second he bit down on the tendon.

His teeth were _sharp_. The sting leapt out of the dreamlike rush of sensation that was Shiro half-naked with someone in his arms – with _Keith_ in his arms. He made a strangled noise and felt Keith's grin against his neck. He got his left hand back into Keith's hair, for the feel of it, and to hold him there with his mouth licking and nipping over that first sting. He got his _other_ hand up the back of Keith's t-shirt, which was a crazy feeling: this prosthetic was better for sensation than the old Galra one had been, and he could feel the knobs of Keith's spine, the fine hair on his skin standing on end as he brushed his metal fingers over them. "Too cold?" he murmured, suddenly concerned.

"That thing has temperature controls?" Keith said. Then he put his lips back to Shiro's neck like he couldn't bring himself to stop.

Shiro made _another_ noise and then yielded to a completely stupid impulse and dropped the prosthetic external temp near as low as it would go, just above freezing, as he pressed his palm flat between the wings of Keith's shoulderblades.

Keith made a sound halfway between a yell and a scream and bit him _again_ , this time probably not on purpose. Shiro snatched his hand away.

Keith burst into laughter. He pressed his face into Shiro's shoulder. His body was shaking and he had his arm around Shiro to keep himself upright. "Shiro, what the hell," he said.

Shiro was laughing too. "It has temperature controls," he said.

"You _dork_ ," said Keith. He pulled away. Shiro liked seeing him smile. Keith's eyes softened and his smile got smaller as he looked up at Shiro's face, and then he took off his own shirt and tossed it aside, and then he took Shiro's hand and said, "Come on, then."

There was a bed in the other room. Keith pulled Shiro down onto it and pushed him over onto his stomach when Shiro reached out to catch at his jaw, trying to pull him in. Shiro laughed again. "Not even gonna get my pants off?"

"Give me a second," Keith said, and he straddled Shiro, knees on either side of his hips, and leaned down over him. Shiro could feel his cock pressed up against the curve of his ass from this angle, and he hitched his hips up, pushed back against it. They both groaned. Shiro did it again. The mattress wasn't much pressure to rub himself against every time he thrust forward but it was better than nothing. Keith felt incredible: his chest and stomach bare against Shiro's back and his strong thighs pinning Shiro's hips and his hands by Shiro's shoulders and his face dropped into the crook of Shiro's neck. He was gasping for breath. Shiro wanted to be touching him everywhere and he _could_.

" _Why_ are we still wearing pants," he said.

"I was going for smooth but you distracted me," said Keith, and he nipped the nape of Shiro's neck, and then his shoulder.

Then he sat back and settled his weight over Shiro's ass and put his hands either side of Shiro's spine. Shiro dropped his head into his folded arms and moaned as Keith dug strong fingers into the muscles there. It took him a moment or two working Shiro over to find the big knot on the right-hand side where the weight of the prosthetic at his shoulder pulled on the muscles and bones around it.

Once he got to work on it Shiro didn't have a chance. He heard himself making sounds he hadn't even known were _in_ him. It wasn't just the tension unravelling, the pain reforming itself into an ache that actually felt good. It was being _touched_ , with care, with intent, with slow determined attention. Shiro was as turned on as he could ever remember being.

It had been so _long_.

"Keith," he managed eventually. His voice was deep and wrecked. "Keith, _Keith_."

"We can stop," Keith said. Shiro could hear that he didn't want to. He could feel it in Keith's hands on him.

"No," he said. "Please, Keith, come on."

"Yeah, okay," Keith said. Then he got off Shiro and said, "Get your pants off," and went rooting in a drawer in the bedside cabinet.

Shiro laughed and did it, and lost his underwear while he was at it. "So much for romance," he said cheerfully. It was a relief to get his cock out after being hard in his clothes with Keith's hands on him for so long. He reached down and squeezed himself left-handed for a moment, a relief and a tease together.

Keith turned to look at him over his bare shoulder. His eyes looked black in this light. His lashes dipped as his gaze went down Shiro's chest, flicked over his stomach and thighs, paused at his hand around his cock before he met Shiro's eyes again. "You look good," he said. "Really good." He chucked supplies on the bed, condoms and lube, and stood up to get rid of his own pants.

Shiro actually had no idea how often Keith did this kind of thing. "Anything you need me to talk you through?"

Keith just smirked at him. "So before I spent two years on a space whale, I was an insurgent commando going on insanely risky missions with a bunch of other insurgent commandos. We all knew we could die any time. And I was _nineteen_ –"

"- and they thought your accent was sexy," Shiro finished, laughing. He remembered being nineteen and hot. He'd fallen in love six months in, but _before_ that was another story. "Got it. Jeez, you've probably had _more_ sex than me."

"Probably," said Keith, unembarrassed.

Shiro had been joking but it was maybe true. Keith was twenty-two. _Shiro_ had been twenty-two the last time someone touched him like this. Since then he'd been hurt half a hundred different ways and lost more than he could ever have imagined a person could lose: but he'd gained things along the way too, and right now he was hard and his skin was still humming with Keith's touch. Keith had turned beautiful sometime when Shiro hadn't been looking. He was never going to be bulky, but that had never been Shiro's type anyway: he'd always liked lean, confident, a spice of attitude, and Keith had all of those. When Shiro got his hands back on Keith's sides under his ribs Keith growled and fell on him.

For a handful of moments it was all just skin on skin, both of them finally naked. God, Keith was _hot_. He ran a degree or two above normal human: the weight of him was like a living blanket. Shiro put his hands everywhere, broad shoulders, narrow waist, the swell of his ass, enjoying how real he was, how alive. Their cocks were flush together and when Shiro pushed up against Keith they both groaned. It hit him that they somehow hadn't kissed yet. He turned his head, reaching for it, but got a mouthful of hair as Keith went back to the spot on Shiro's neck that made Shiro tip his head back and moan. "Y'gonna – you're gonna – a mark," he managed, between gasps. "Keith."

"Sorry," muttered Keith, not sounding very sorry, and he nipped Shiro's throat one last time and then pressed his lips to the spot, gentle, an apology after all.

"Can I," Shiro said, "can we," but Keith didn't get what he was asking, maybe. He tipped Shiro over on his side and then got on top of him, bore him down. Then they were back to humping each other. This time Shiro had to grip the bedframe with his metal fingers to keep himself grounded. Keith's cock was sliding easily against the crack of his ass. Shiro was dying all the places Keith wasn't touching him, shoving himself back so he could get _more_ and _more_.

He wanted Keith to touch his cock and Keith did: he spat into his hand and then took hold of Shiro in an easy grip that Shiro could shove himself into as they moved frantically against each other. He wanted Keith to kiss his mouth and Keith didn't, but his hand was braced by Shiro's face and Shiro turned towards his narrow wrist. Keith took the hint and gave Shiro his fingers, just pressed lightly against his lips. Shiro sucked them into his mouth and was rewarded when Keith made a hurt sound above him and thrust harder against Shiro's ass. " _Shiro_ ," he said.

Shiro let his fingers go and kissed the pads of them one last time. "C'mon," he said.

Keith hadn't been kidding when he said he knew what he was doing. Shiro didn't even feel guilty just lying sprawled on his stomach and letting Keith get him ready while he moaned for it. If he'd gone out and picked up some hook-up, some stranger – though Shiro was well past the stage of his life where that thought appealed to him even a little bit – he would have worried he wasn't being fair, wasn't doing enough of the work. But he _knew_ Keith, so it wasn't remotely surprising Keith wanted to take charge. Shiro could relax and go along for the ride.

"Hell of a ride," Keith murmured, edge of a drawl.

" _Now_ who's the dork," Shiro said, laughing, and then "- _ngh_."

Keith took ages over opening him up, so slow and thorough that Shiro was leaking all over himself by the time he was satisfied, and nearly begging: "C'mon, Keith, come _on_ , I can take it."

"You're tight," Keith said. His voice was low. "Take it easy."

"Forget that, _give_ it to me –"

"I'll take care of you," Keith said, very soft, and his clean hand ghosted over Shiro's hair, stroking up from the nape of his neck, a strange backwards caress that made Shiro shiver. He'd never quite hit the two-thirds drunk mark he'd been going for, and the soft edges were wearing off the room now; he was aware of some unwelcomely huge emotion bearing down on him and he didn't want it, didn't want to _think_.

Keith knew, somehow. He bit the meat of Shiro's shoulder and the quick clean pain of it knocked Shiro straight back into the moment, his whole body loosened up and eager, his blood pounding in his ears, his cock leaking. "Keith," he gasped.

Keith pulled his fingers out of Shiro just long enough to put on a condom – no fumbling, either, so either the Galra did something similar or Keith had been getting around on Earth too since they'd been back – and then the part of Shiro's brain that made notes and remembered details dropped offline as Keith came into him in one smooth thrust.

Oh _fuck_ that was good.

Keith was holding still above him, braced on his hands like a gentleman. Shiro wanted his weight, the heat of him, the sweat rolling down his spine where they were skin to skin. He hadn't done this in a while. He'd thought once that by the time he hit his mid-twenties he maybe wouldn't be able to fuck like this, not _this_ way, carelessly, effortlessly. The thought of that had bounced him from hookup to hookup, made him greedy, made him want everything he could possibly have while he could still have it.

That wasn't now. Only now was now. Shiro felt full and half-crazy. He rolled his hips experimentally and they both groaned. Keith's arms were shaking.

"How's that patience?" Shiro murmured. He tried the move again, slow and easy, fucking himself on Keith's cock, feeling every inch of it slide deep. Oh. _Oh_.

"I'm – _real_ focused," Keith bit out.

Shiro couldn't help the laugh; it came up from deep in his belly. Keith made a strangled noise and half-collapsed on him – and _yeah_ , that was it, that was the full-body slide of skin that Shiro wanted. And then Keith took hold of his shoulder and held him there and started fucking him in earnest.

He was good at it, too: steady, confident, falling easily into a rhythm that worked for both of them. Shiro gave himself over to it, let his body relearn it: his heart and lungs and muscles and bones all on his side for once, held and wanted and feeling it everywhere. It was like racing through the desert with the wind grabbing your hair and the sheer force of your bike trying to buck up against you, which was only a difference of scale from the G-forces of piloting, another thing Shiro had thought he'd lose by now – but he hadn't, he was here, he was alive and his body was his own after all, and this was what he was doing with it. Keith's breath was hot gasps against the side of his neck and Shiro closed his eyes and reached for him, interlocked flesh-and-blood fingers with flesh-and-blood fingers. He reached down and took himself in hand – the thick fingers of the prosthetic were warm and smooth and tight – and Keith thrust into him again, and again, and Shiro came.

It crashed over him like a wave. God, sex was so different to businesslike jerking off in the shower when he remembered. God, it was so much _better_.

It took Shiro a moment or two to come back to himself, breathing hard, feeling wrung out and satisfied right down to his toes. Keith was panting raggedly above him. He'd gone still. Shiro felt a rush of something nameless, warmth, pride; it had to be killing Keith to wait like this, his cock still deep inside Shiro. "Okay?" he mumbled.

"I can pull out," Keith said.

"Mm, no, just –" Shiro wiggled a little and Keith hissed, rocked into him again like he couldn't help it. "Face to face," Shiro explained.

"Okay," Keith said, and they did it. When Shiro rolled onto his back he stretched out, enjoying the looseness in his limbs, and then reached up for Keith. Keith looked – beautiful; hair falling over his dark eyes, sweat beading along his collarbones, and his lower lip swollen like he'd been biting it. Shiro spread his legs and arched a little, inviting. Keith closed his eyes for a second, nodded once, and then lined himself up with careful attention and pushed in slowly.

Shiro whined – he was sensitive this soon after orgasm – but said, "Don't stop, don't stop," when Keith looked up at him, attentive.

"I'm close," Keith got out.

" _Come on_."

Keith took a deep gulp of a breath and started moving in him again. Shiro had always liked this part, actually, the oversensitive almost-too-much of it, and watching his partner fall apart. He braced his heel low on Keith's back to keep the angle right and held onto him while he fucked Shiro harder and harder. His eyes were closed and his lip was caught in his teeth and he was grimacing almost like he was in pain. "Keith," Shiro said, "Keith, yeah, come on."

" _Shiro_ ," Keith got out, and he managed to get an arm under Shiro's knee and lift it so he could thrust deeper. Shiro was bent nearly double and crying out at the feeling, and Keith looked like he was on the very edge of falling apart, gasping softly every time they moved.

His eyes were still squeezed shut. "Look at me," Shiro said. "Look at me, Keith –"

Keith did. He opened his eyes, which were slit-pupilled black and gold, and he stared down at Shiro and then in a helpless half-lunge he dragged him up close and kissed him. It was a messy off-target kiss. It was their first. Shiro kissed him back desperately, and Keith cried out into it because he was coming, shuddering, clinging to Shiro like he never wanted to let go.

 

Afterwards Keith pulled out and got rid of the condom somewhere. Shiro wasn't paying attention. He felt deliciously exhausted – the good kind of tired, which didn't happen to him often. He managed to stay awake just long enough to wait for Keith to come back to the bed. He mumbled something wordless and reached out for him. Keith was sitting slightly too far away to be grabbed. Shiro frowned against the pillow and switched hands.

"Wh – huh," Keith said, and then he chuckled quietly as the prosthetic hand pulled him flat. He curled up behind Shiro and put an arm over him.

Shiro fell asleep straight away.

 

He woke up before Keith. It was still dark outside. There was no visible clock in the cabin, but Shiro didn't have the slightest doubt that back at the Garrison his alarm had just started going off.

The two of them had shifted in their sleep so they were face to face. Keith took up surprisingly little space asleep. His hair was falling over his face. He looked small, and vulnerable. Shiro never thought of him as either of those things.

He got quietly out of bed and found his clothes and put them on. He went outside. He took the last of the bottle of whiskey with him. The purple Galra drain-cleaner stuff he left where it was, still mostly full.

Sunrise over the desert: greys to pinks to burgeoning golds. Shiro walked a little way up the hill and watched it a while. His head felt surprisingly clear. He'd drunk less than he'd persuaded himself he had last night.

When the sun was almost over the horizon Shiro solemnly took a sip. Then he poured out the last of the whiskey into the sand. He'd missed the day, but that was no reason not to honour the memory. Adam had been a whiskey man. He'd come up to Shiro in a bar the summer Shiro was nineteen and handed him a glass of scotch. _Stop wasting your time and try this,_ he'd said, smirking: lean, confident, a little spice of attitude.

"You deserved better," Shiro said quietly to the morning air.

He didn't know exactly what he meant: a better life, a _longer_ life, not to be shot out of the air by Galra fighters because Shiro had stupidly let himself forget that there was one Galra commander at least who knew where the Paladins came from. A better chance. At the very least, all those years ago, a better boyfriend.

The desert didn't answer him. Shiro hadn't expected it to. He set the empty bottle down and folded his arms and watched the sky.

A few minutes later Keith walked up to him. "Morning," he said.

Shiro threw him a small smile. "Morning, Keith."

Keith didn't say anything else for a moment or two. He was wearing yesterday's clothes as well, hands jammed deep in his pockets. They watched the sun crest the horizon together.

"Ready to head back?" said Keith at last.

"Keith," Shiro said.

"We don't have to talk about it." The quirk of Keith's lips said what he wasn't saying: _you don't have to talk about it, you don't have to talk about anything, I understand, I know._

Keith did understand. He knew, better than anyone. Shiro had always seen himself in Keith – all out, or what was the point: the goal, the dream, a chance at the stars. But maybe they weren't as similar as Shiro had once assumed. Shiro had been all out from the first – in every test, in every race, taking every chance, and finally all the way out to Pluto.

Keith wasn't like that. It might look similar, but it wasn't the same thing at all. The thing that made Keith a natural leader, a born hero, and maybe a better man than Shiro was – it was something that Shiro had never found in himself. Because Keith _wasn't_ all out. When the chips were down, every time, he was all in.

Maybe it was time Shiro tried to live up to that.

“Listen," he said.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Keith. “Any time.”

“Not what I was going to say,” Shiro said. “Can I kiss you?”

Keith went still.

"I didn't ask, last night," Shiro said. "I tried to but I don't think I managed to say it properly. I want to. Can I?"

Keith said, "No." He tilted his head back a little, eyes on the sky, not looking at Shiro properly. "Not if you don't mean it," he said. "I don't think I could take it."

And there it was, out in the open, because Keith was as brave as any lion. The feeling Shiro had tried to kid himself was warmth, pride, something manageable and ordinary, was rising in him again, so huge he thought it might break him open. His mouth was dry. He had to swallow a couple of times to speak.

"I mean it," he said. "I want it. Keith, I love you. I'm all in if you are."

Keith turned to him sharply, eyes wide. And then abruptly Shiro was being grabbed and kissed within an inch of his life.

He spluttered and then relaxed into it. Keith didn't let go. The kiss went on and on as Keith kissed Shiro and Shiro kissed him back, and all the time the morning brightened around them.

Finally they broke apart. Shiro laughed.

"What?" demanded Keith.

"I said, can _I_ kiss _you_ ," Shiro said.

"Oh," said Keith. He grinned, quick and sharp. "Too slow, old man."

Shiro kissed him.

He tried to make it good, make it deep and promising. Keith was breathing hard and looking dazed by the time it ended. Shiro grinned down at him. Keith scowled, but it wasn't remotely convincing: a faint disbelieving smile, sweet and hopeful, was tugging at the corner of his mouth the whole time.

Shiro imagined taking him by the hand and leading him back down the hill and back to bed. He wanted all of it again, wanted everything – with Keith meeting his eyes this time, and kissing his mouth.

Unfortunately they were who they were. Responsibility was waiting at the Garrison for both of them.

They had to have some leave days saved up, though. Shiro brightened at the thought. He hadn't taken any leave since well before Kerberos. They could spend whole days in bed then. For now he kissed Keith quickly one more time, and then gestured to their bikes where they were parked haphazardly outside the cabin. "Race you home?" he said.

"Seriously?" said Keith.

Shiro wriggled his Altean fingers at him. "I'll give you a head start."

"Oh, it is _on_ ," Keith said.

Shiro smirked at him. "Get ready to lose."

He felt like he'd won the whole world, drawing in on the dust of Keith's bike up ahead of him. He'd won it all.

This time, he wouldn't throw it away.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on [tumblr](http://emilyenrose.tumblr.com).


End file.
